"I have been trying, for about the last twenty years, to link the following three dimensions: lived experience, technologies [...], and silences." - Susan Leigh Star
data not found is a dataset of datasets that were sought but not found on data portals around the world.
It invites consideration of what is and is not counted as public data, what kinds of information public bodies do and do not collect and make available, and what kinds of questions it is and is not possible to answer with public sector data.
The project traces and archives encounters between citizens and public servants on data portals, surfacing different understandings and assumptions about what data portals are for, what can be done on them, and what kinds of data one might expect institutions to gather and open up.
Rather than assuming a kind of "data universalism", these unsuccessful attempts to obtain data through portals highlight some of the different ways in which data comes to matter to different people in different situations. What is considered missing data, absent data, a "data gap" or a "data void" is contingent, relational and situational.
The as yet unsuccessful requests have been selected from data portals around the world to illustrate a diversity of interests, concerns, curiosities and queries for data that does not exist. They are not intended to be representative of all requests on all portals as:
- Not all data portals make requests and responses to these requests available.
- Not all unsuccessful data requests have been included (e.g. those containing personal details, duplicate requests, requests which are redirected).
The source list can be found at data/sources.csv.
The project draws on previous and ongoing work on data politics and missing data, including Data Worlds (forthcoming, MIT Press), "What do data portals do? Tracing the politics of online devices for making data public" as well as:
- Bruno, I., Didier, E., Vitale, T. (2014) "Statactivism: forms of action between disclosure and affirmation". Partecipazione e conflitto - PArticipation and COnflict, 7(2): 198-220.
- Gray, J. & Davies, D. (2015) "Fighting Phantom Firms in the UK: From Opening Up Datasets to Reshaping Data Infrastructures?". Working paper presented at the Open Data Research Symposium at the 3rd International Open Government Data Conference in Ottawa, May 27th 2015
- Ọnụọha, M. (2016) "The Library of Missing Datasets".
- Ọnụọha, M. (2016) "The Point of Collection", Data & Society: Points.
- Gray, J., Lammerhirt D., & Bounegru L. (2016) "Changing What Counts: How Can Citizen-Generated and Civil Society Data Be Used as an Advocacy Tool to Change Official Data Collection?", CIVICUS DataShift.
- Milan, S., & van der Velden, L. (2016). "The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism". Digital Culture & Society, 2, 57–74.
- Gray, J. (2016) "Datafication and democracy: Recalibrating digital information systems to address societal interests", Juncture.
- Gray, J. (2018) "Three Aspects of Data Worlds", Krisis.
- Gray, J. (2018) "Data infrastructure literacy", Big Data & Society, 5(2).
- Gray, J. & Bounegru, L. (2018) "What a difference a dataset makes? Data journalism and/as data activism" in Data in Society: Challenging Statistics in an Age of Globalisation, J. Evans, S. Ruane and H. Southall (eds). Bristol: The Policy Press.
- Centre for Public Data (2019) Missing numbers.
- Cobham, A. (2020) The Uncounted. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
- D'Ignazio, C. & Klein, L. (2020) Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Bounegru, L. & Gray, J. (Eds.) (2021) The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards A Critical Data Practice. Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam University Press.
- Ọnụọha, M. "What is Missing is Still There" in H. Armstrong (Ed.) Big Data, Big Design: Why Designers Should Care About Artificial Intelligence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press.